PromptsFacets of Faramir: QuestionerOff the Map’s Edge: The Dunlendings

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One Man’s Meat

“Us they call the Straw-Heads,” she told him. “And they hate us for settling in lands they deem their own. But you...”

“Aye?” he said. “And what do they call us?”

“They have many names for you. Stone-Eaters, for how your forefathers wrought towers and cities from mountains—”

“That might be taken as praise—”

“Tree-Fellers, Fire-Makers—”

“Those less so—”

“And Land-Robbers.”

That last he pondered for some time. Whence, he asked himself, comes such implacable hate? He did not need his books to give him the answer: that one man’s settlement is another’s dispossession. Another’s exile.